If nothing is going well, call your grandmother.
-- Italian Proverb

Frugality.

Not a popular word in the United States, with our cultural emphasis on the importance of having money. We’re conditioned to be consumers. Hard times, recession, and thrifty are not words that we like to hear or use. Yet there is a blessing hidden in learning to live on less. Perhaps it can be seen more easily by those of us who have lived through years of economic ups and downs …your parents and grandparents.

Simplicity Movement.

There is even a movement that has been around for a while. Books and articles have been written about returning to simplicity. Some people have chosen to live more simply as a spiritual practice, some as a life enhancing strategy and some out of the practical realities of their lives.

How?

So how do we do this? How do we model this for our children and grandchildren?

It seems a consistent pattern that we accumulate things as we grow up, acquire even more as we raise children and even more if our income level has risen considerably. For many, as we get older, we begin to give away an increasing number of things.

As our children pass through one stage after another, we give away the toys and clothes that no longer fit. Except for those special things we can’t bear to part with ! Then there are the years when our kids have left and their things have gone with them. Except for those things that we are storing for them, of course!

That’s the easy part of frugality. The greater challenge is not just getting rid of what we don’t need, it is in looking at what we believe we have to have. We are often unaware of the impact that advertising has on us, to say nothing of how much we are influenced by what our friends and neighbors buy.

I think it would be an interesting experience to go through a typical day in our lives and see what brings us genuine pleasure. Unless we are barely surviving, it is more likely to be the richness of our relationships, the good feeling of accomplishment when we do something well or the pleasant experience of doing something for another person.

What I have found.

In my own experience of cutting back on expenditures, I have found some interesting results:

• I do not need many things I thought I had to have. Neither do my children or grandchildren.
• The experience of pleasure is mostly the result of my attitude about what I am experiencing.
• I can simply notice envy when it appears in my mind and know that it will leave if I don’t pay much attention to it.

I am sustained by my belief that my life is as it should be and I am comforted by the famous words of the mystic Julian of Norwich

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”.

Through a variety of hard times over the years, that has been my true experience.